Welcome to Wikipedia

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit

Almanac · Categories · FAQs · Glossaries · Lists · Overviews · Portals · Site news · Index

Today’s featured article…

Wreckage from the Battle of Villers-Bocage

The Battle of Villers-Bocage took place in Normandy, France, on 13 June 1944 during World War II. Following the D-Day landings on 6 June, the Germans established defences in front of Caen. The British attacked to attempt to exploit a gap in the German defences west of the city. They reached Villers-Bocage without incident in the morning but were ambushed by Tiger I tanks as they left the town and numerous tanks, anti-tank guns and transport vehicles were destroyed. The Germans then attacked the town but were repulsed. The British withdrew west of Villers-Bocage that evening and repulsed another attack the next day. The British conduct in the battle was controversial because their withdrawal marked the end of the post–D-Day "scramble for ground" and the start of an attritional battle for Caen. Some historians wrote that the British attack was a failure caused by a lack of conviction among some senior commanders; others judged the British force to be insufficiently strong for the task. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

On this day…

June 13

USS Jeannette

1525 – Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, beginning the practice of clerical marriage in Protestantism.
1881 – The Jeannette expedition to reach the North Pole from the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait came to an end when the USS Jeannette (pictured) was finally crushed and sank after having been trapped in ice for almost two years.
1952 – Soviet aircraft shot down a Swedish military plane carrying out signals-intelligence gathering operations, followed three days later by the shootdown of a second plane searching for the first one.
1969 – Preston Smith, Governor of Texas, signed a law converting a research arm of Texas Instruments into the University of Texas at Dallas.
2013 – Some of the closest advisors and collaborators of Czech prime minister Petr Nečas were arrested for corruption.

Henry Middleton (d. 1784)
Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre (b. 1804)
Charles Algernon Parsons (b. 1854)
Fran Allison (d. 1989)

More anniversaries:

In the news…

Saulos Chilima

A plane crash in Mzimba, Malawi, kills nine people, including Vice President Saulos Chilima (pictured).
In tennis, Iga Świątek wins the Women's Singles and Carlos Alcaraz wins the Men's Singles at the French Open.
In the Indian general election, the National Democratic Alliance, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is re-elected with a reduced majority.
The Boeing Starliner spacecraft conducts its first crewed flight, carrying two astronauts to the International Space Station.

Did you know?

From Wikipedia's newest articles:

...that the Roman de Fergus is the earliest piece of non-Celtic vernacular literature to have survived from Scotland?
...that the Philharmonia Hungarica made the first complete recording of Haydn's symphonies, was an orchestra founded by Hungarian exiles and funded by the West German government during the Cold War?
...that the dachas of the Russian poets Boris Pasternak, Korney Chukovsky, and Bulat Okudzhava in the village of Peredelkino near Moscow are open to the public as memorial houses?
...that an aerosani is a type of air-powered, armoured snowmobile, which was used for transport, reconnaissance, and raiding by the Red Army in the Winter War and the Second World War?
...that a push–pull converter is a type of DC-to-DC converter that uses a transformer to step the voltage of a DC power supply?
...that the Chicana artist Yolanda Lopez became famous with the painting "Virgen de Guadalupe", which represents Lopez's personal investigation into Virgen de Guadalupe's status in Mexican society?

Archive – Start a new article

Wikipedia Community

There are many places within Wikipedia where Wikipedians work together and help each other. Well, that description includes just about every page! But there are some special places reserved for specific types of community involvement and assistance, and here they are:

The Community Portal — Involvement central. Find out what projects you can join and what activities are needed to develop and maintain Wikipedia.
The Reference Desk — Ask a question about any subject, just like at a library's reference desk.
The Help Desk — Come here if you are having trouble. Ask a question on how to use or edit Wikipedia.
The Village pump — The main discussion forums of Wikipedia.
The Signpost — Wikipedia's newspaper; where to get and post news about what's happening on this website.
Donations — This is what makes Wikipedia possible. Please give what you can. Thank you!

Wikipedia in other languages

You may read and edit articles in many different languages:

Wikipedia encyclopedia languages with over 100,000 articles: Deutsch (German) · Français (French) · Italiano (Italian) · 日本語 (Japanese) · Nederlands (Dutch) · Polski (Polish) · Svenska (Swedish)

Wikipedia encyclopedia languages with over 10,000 articles: العربية (Arabic) · Български (Bulgarian) · Català (Catalan) · Česky (Czech) · Dansk (Danish) · Eesti (Estonian) · Español (Spanish) · Esperanto · Galego (Galician) · עברית (Hebrew) · Hrvatski (Croatian) · Ido · Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) · 한국어 (Korean) · Lietuvių (Lithuanian) · Magyar (Hungarian) · Bahasa Melayu (Malay) · Norsk bokmål (Norwegian) · Norsk nynorsk (Norwegian) · Português (Portuguese) · Română (Romanian) · Русский (Russian) · Slovenčina (Slovak) · Slovenščina (Slovenian) · Српски (Serbian) · Suomi (Finnish) · Türkçe (Turkish) · Українська (Ukrainian) · 中文 (Chinese)

Wikipedia encyclopedia languages with over 1,000 articles:Alemannisch (Alemannic) · Afrikaans · Aragonés (Aragonese) · Asturianu (Asturian) · Bân-lâm-gú (Min Nan) · Беларуская (Belarusian) · Bosanski (Bosnian) · Brezhoneg (Breton) · Чăваш чěлхи (Chuvash) · Corsu (Corsican) · Cymraeg (Welsh) · Ελληνικά (Greek) · Euskara (Basque) · فارسی (Persian) · Føroyskt (Faroese) · Frysk (Western Frisian) · Gaeilge (Irish) · Gàidhlig (Scots Gaelic) · हिन्दी (Hindi) · Interlingua · Íslenska (Icelandic) · Basa Jawa (Javanese) · ქართული (Georgian) · ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada) · Kurdî / كوردی (Kurdish) · Latina (Latin) · Latviešu (Latvian) · Lëtzebuergesch (Luxembourgish) · Limburgs (Limburgish) · Македонски (Macedonian) · मराठी (Marathi) · Napulitana (Neapolitan) · Occitan · Ирон (Ossetic) · Plattdüütsch (Low Saxon) · Scots · Sicilianu (Sicilian) · Simple English · Shqip (Albanian) · Srpskohrvatski/Српскохрватски (Serbo–Croatian) · Sugbuanon (Cebuano) · தமிழ் (Tamil) · Tagalog · ภาษาไทย (Thai) · Tatarça (Tatar) · తెలుగు (Telugu) · Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) · Walon (Walloon)

Complete list · Multilingual coordination · Start a Wikipedia in another language

Wikipedia's sister projects

Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other volunteer projects: